This article investigates the effects of emotional intervention on artificial immune networks used for navigation of autonomous agents (simulated autonomous mobile robots). It is known from psychoneuroimmunology that stress influences the immune system response. From the various models of emotions related to stress available in literature, the computational model of the amygdala reported by Moc...

PURPOSE To determine the value that the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM)-funded Education Project leaders placed on self-awareness objectives among their curricular activities, to identify projects' rationales for inclusion of self-awareness activities, and to describe curricular elements used to teach self-awareness. METHOD A survey was distributed to the NC...

There is an extensive literature concerned with the integration of the immune system with the central nervous system (CNS) and endocrine systems. Each of these body systems is complex, and studying the interactions among the three systems raises the complexity by orders of magnitude. The field of “psychoneuroimmunology” or “neuroimmunomodulation” is a rapidly de veloping field and encompasses t...

As mental and psychological issues are important in the development of many dermatologic diseases, these factors are of special interest in research. Psychoneuroimmunology is the study of interaction between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems of the human body, and it was comprehensively described for the first time about 30 years ago. Communication between the mind and ...

Vertebrate sickness behaviors, which include lethargy, anorexia, and decreased libido, can facilitate defense against pathogens by conserving energy for use in other immune responses and by limiting parasites' access to nutrients. Such benefits come with considerable costs, however, as lethargy decreases the time available for other fitness-enhancing activities and dampened libido directly redu...

Psychological stress has long been reported anecdotally to increase disease activity in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and recent well designed studies have confirmed that adverse life events, chronic stress, and depression increase the likelihood of relapse in patients with quiescent IBD. This evidence is increasingly supported by studies of experimental stress in animal models of colitis. ...

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and workshops. Leaders in research and practice lectured in the three topic areas of Cancer, Functional Disorders (including irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia) and Metabolic Syndrome (obesity, syndrome X, diabetes). Following each lecture there was a panel discussion of clinical cases with questions taken from the audience. Workshops provided hands on experience to help guide referral or u...

Mind-body interactions have been well recognized and are extendedly studied in the medical literature. There is evidence that the mind and body communicate with each other in a multidirectional flow of information by means of hormones, neurotransmitters/neuropeptides, cytokines, and semaphorines. There are consistent and convincing reports of links between stress and disease onset and progressi...

Wakefulness and sleep-wake-regulation are complex states, a lot of different components and regulatory mechanisms contribute to these functions. One of the factors involved in sleep wake regulation is the immune system, itself being highly complex, consisting of humoral and cellular components. Molecules that transport the information are, beside others, the “immunotransmitters”, the cytokines....